Play date: November 23, 2013
Game date: August 9, EY218
Location: iLanga system, uBuntu, on the north sea of iziMpilo
Previous events: coming within sight of isiQhingibi, the cursed island
Despite its name the "evil island" of isiQhingibi doesn't look especially dangerous; it has a distinct conical shape with a somewhat fluted look to it. There is no smoke coming out the top and it actually rises to a sharpish point. Probably not a volcano. Malcolm half-expected it to look like a giant skull and is a little disappointed that it looks so calm. The strangest thing about it other than its disconcerting regularity is the yellow spotting that covers it.
On the final leg of the approach they decide to leave Niabulo and his crew on The Diatom in case they need to make a quick exit. Everyone else will take their weapons, food for a week -- Bishop's dried supplies make this possible -- as much water as is feasible and water purification pills as well, and some thin tents and sleeping bags. It's a lot to carry but Rans and Volkova are physical brutes and can take much more than their share. lanGalibalele and Malcolm are also stronger than average, so it's manageable.
There doesn't look to be anywhere to tie up the ship to the island so they take the ship's rowboat in, requiring two trips. This close the island actually looks regular enough to be artificial, which is a bit frightening, and The Diatom's crew looks happy to stay behind.
The yellow spotting is actually plants that grow up the side of the island. They have fleshy, half-moon shaped leaves and grow up to two metres high in some places. Bishop has never seen or even heard of plants like this elsewhere on uBuntu and neither has his father. Perhaps it's due to the humidity here in the middle of the sea that they can grow at all. He can't even be sure that they are plants. Maybe they're fungi? He takes a sample and puts it into a canvas bag, where it glows slightly! The plants all seem to be glowing, something that's not obvious in the constant light. Looking into the bag again, Bishop sees that the glow is quickly fading.
Without any obvious landmark to lure them they decide to head up to the peak; the slope is a pretty steady thirty degrees so while it will be hard on feet and backs it won't be dangerous. The valleys between the fluting have denser plants but is less exposed to wind and elements so they head up there, Bishop in front.
The trip is a slog, the steep slope and dense plants making for slow going and lots of rest stops for the less fit members of the team. After perhaps eight hours of this Volkova starts to wonder what these yellow plants taste like. She's had pretty good experiences with plants since leaving the cube-food of Walküren, after all, and she can't help but to pull off a lobe and take a bite. The taste is terrible and she spits it out but can't rinse the taste out of her mouth. She takes off her backpack and rifles through it for food, wolfing down all she can to get rid of the taste, but it's not working.
Her behaviour is noticed and everyone stops while they work out what to do with her. Volkova readily admits to taking a bite out of the plants and has bright yellow staining on her lips, teeth, and -- most disturbingly -- tongue. Everyone takes a break while Bishop mixes up an emetic for her. No one wants to watch it work and while looking the other way Malcolm notices a cave hidden in the dense foliage.
Volkova might not have any more plant in her stomach but whatever is causing her behaviour is still in her bloodstream and she's still desperate to get the taste out of her mouth. They have to switch the supplies around and load her down with the non-edible equipment. They also have to remove the food from Jillian's pack after Volkova immediately starts pawing at the backpack that's right in front of her.
The cave looks too regular to be natural and the glowing plants are growing inside it, too. Chig's dreams weren't any more specific than ruins being here and that they were important, so the Grob can only give the equivalent of a shrug when asked if the cave is a good idea. Everyone agrees to head inside and Malcolm insists on taking point, as he sees the worst in this situation and has a firearm. Bishop, Jillian, Volkova, lanGalibalele, Seo, Chig, and Rans enter after him in that order. His assault rifle leading the way, Malcolm heads in.
It's not like a corridor: line of sight is never more than a handful of metres even with the glowing plants and there's a lot of clambering over and ducking under irregularities in the floor, walls, and ceiling as well as changes in direction and branching points. Jillian starts leaving a series of her D'vor warning posters behind them like a trail of breadcrumbs. The walls start to look more and more artificial as they head deeper and it starts to look like it's part of a gigantic device of some sort. The Dreamers also note that the Dreamscape feels like it's pressing in on them here, very insistent and strong.
After well over an hour of this Bishop decides that it would be a good time to Dream to see if they can get a better idea of what this is about and where to go. The three Dreamers sit in a tight circle and start to drop into the Dream.
Not long at all after they begin Malcolm hears a sound coming from deeper down the tunnel. He quickly readies his rifle and waits. After several seconds an uBuntan clambers over an obstruction holding something that looks like it's made of the same material as the walls and resembles a large piece of broccoli. It doesn't seem to be a weapon and isn't held in a threatening way. The uBuntan is dressed in rags and it doesn't look like he's had a shave or a haircut in a long while. Disturbingly, he's also got some patches of the glowing plants growing on his skin. Malcolm calls for him to stop but he's ignored and when a few metres away from the party the uBuntan pushes the "broccoli" into a hole in the wall, where it seems to meld into the surface. The man then slowly walks off, never acknowledging the existence of the group.
Malcolm runs up to the unattractive man and physically restrains him: the man slightly struggles to no avail. Malcolm asks Volkova to hold the man in place and when she does so he roughly smacks Bishop out of the Dream. It take a little time for Bishop to be properly present but once he is he tries to talk to the man. This also doesn't work.
Chig and lanGalibalele are more gently pulled out the Dreaming and everyone follows the man once Volkova releases him. He walks for a few hours and they don't seem to be getting anywhere in particular. On the way they pass by a woman -- whom Malcolm notices as being very attractive -- who is apparently kneading the wall but is otherwise much like the man they're following. About an hour into the trip Bishop notices what looks like a piece of organic shell about 35 centimetres long and takes it along. Maybe it's related to the Dream he had with Chig about the beings in shells who communicated with each other?
As they continue along Bishop starts to notice that his father and Chig seem to be too eager to continue on and want to pick up the pace. It's strange. When he mentions his suspicions to Malcolm he's told to pretend that he's hurt his ankle to call a halt: Malcolm thinks that maybe they're too close to the mystery man and he's affecting them. He and most of the group keep talking to lanGalibalele and Chig. They find the affected pair to indeed be too interested by half in continuing on but they're lucid and don't need to be physically restrained. Volkova's uninterested in this and just treats the stop as another meal break.
Jillian points out that the man they're following doesn't seem to be going anywhere in particular and that the passageways they're in don't look very different from the ones they first encountered him in. They decide to let him go on and try to work out more about this place on their own. While Jillian, Rans, and Seo keep Chig and lanGalibalele from wandering off Bishop Dreams, Malcolm keeps watch, and Volkova examines the walls in detail.
Bishop Dreams while focusing on the piece of shell that he found. It seems that the shell isn't the shell that he Dreamed about -- all of uBuntu, specifically these hallways they've been wandering though. is the shell! So what does it communicate with? When he comes out of his Dream he gets some bad news: his father and Chig have both stopped talking and are acting like the man they first encountered. Although they don't struggle with all their strength they are trying to get past everyone and wander off. They're easy to restrain but they get tied up nonetheless. Rans is especially worried about Chig but is totally helpless and lost; Seo consoles the Grob.
Volkova finishes her investigation and reveals that the walls are indeed part of a giant device. More importantly, although it's not doing at all what space drives do it's apparently built on the same principles. Bishop thinks that whoever made the space drives probably made the structure they're in. It makes sense: if someone wanted humans and other species to travel the stars it makes sense that they would build structures to let these species communicate. But why these dazed people wandering the place?
Seo joins Volkova in looking at the walls to see if they can work out where something more central is; Volkova's general knowledge of the similar space drive technology and Seo's more general but theoretical knowledge of xenotechnology could have some synergy.
Maybe Bishop can communicate through the Dreaming with his father and find out what's going on. He knows his father well enough that he might be able to connect with him through the Dreaming despite the state lanGalibalele is in.
As Bishop drops into the Dreaming next to his dad Malcolm continues to prowl the perimeter expecting things to get worse. He finds more shell fragments similar to what Bishop found earlier and calls Jillian over. The two of them find a stash of fragments that are articulated, seeming to be in the position where the creature died, making it easy to piece together what the thing looked like in real life. Whatever this was it was around a metre high, with a roughly spherical shell and four arms or legs. They'll have to wait until Bishop comes out of the Dream to find out if something like this is known to uBuntans.
Bishop does get to look into his father's mind but it seems like his father is very far away. Not gone, but effectively locked away in a corner of his mind. Most of his mind is taken up with what seems to be instructions to move things and repair things. It's like he's an ant with simple instructions that he doesn't have to understand to carry out. There's not much more here so he opens his mind up more and tries to communicate with whatever is running the whole place and giving these instructions. He eventually succeeds and finds that the "mind", too, doesn't seem to fully understand what it's doing. It's not truly intelligent and what intelligence he can find is distributed all over the planet in its crust! There is much to be repaired, it seems, and he can tell that more repairs have been completed near the major population centres of uBuntu than off in the hinterlands.
When he wakes up to this reality he's got an idea for where the nearest hub of the mind is. Happily, this direction agrees with what Seo and Volkova have worked out.
Malcolm brings Bishop over to the shell and bones and it's definitely not something that Bishop knows of. uBuntu has crustaceans but they're small, no bigger than the span of a hand, and don't have bones. Maybe these are whatever was doing repairs earlier on, before humans found the planet?
There are more and more questions but at this point everyone is exhausted. They roll out sleeping bags and sleep wherever they can find enough space. Chig and lanGalibalele remain tied up and a rotating watch of two people is kept. The watch is in pairs not least to keep Volkova from eating all the food.
August 10, EY218
Sleep was difficult and uncomfortable and everyone's tired and grumpy when they pack up the sleeping bags. Everyone's also got sore muscles from all the clambering they've had to do so far. Volkova's the least grumpy when she gets a massive meal, her appetite still unquenchable.
As they're about to head to the hub Seo notices that some of the yellow plant life is growing on Chig and lanGalibalele. Malcolm takes his knife and tries scraping if off of the uBuntan but the border between plant and human is hazy and he soon has to hastily put a bandage over the wound he's scraped on Bishop's father, hoping that Bishop doesn't notice. He does and the two get into a slight argument. Volkova offers to carry lanGalibalele and Rans carries Chig; they're strong enough that they should be able to carry them all the way to their destination.
The trek in the direction that they've chosen takes another five gruelling hours or so, coming across a few more ant-humans on the way, but it's worth it when they enter what seems to be the local hub. It's housed in an irregular room about twenty metres on a side, with a massive crystal lattice suspended from the ceiling. There are no obvious controls but this seems to be the perfect place to Dream and Bishop does so. The humans are indeed being used as a repair system for uBuntu; the system has its own self-repair systems that's working but it's very slow. The distributed nature of the system means that there isn't a small number of key repairs that would be good enough to jump things along; it needs more repairs overall until it's working properly and that can't be hurried. The uBuntans that it's using are a secondary repair system but it doesn't have to be humans who do this; the instructions are simple enough that any living thing that can move and carry small items could be used.
Bishop stops Dreaming and wakes up to everyone else deciding to leave before anything worse happens. Two of them have been lost to this place and they should get out before anyone else follows them. After all, once Chig and lanGalibalele started to show symptoms they were taken over pretty quickly. Bishop thinks this is a foolish idea and that they should keep going deeper into the machinery and see what else there is.
Everyone immediately worries that Bishop's been affected, something that he completely denies and therefore inadvertently confirms. Jillian hypothesizes that sleeping seems to be safe; the Dreamers are the only ones being affected so far and if Bishop made it through the night without losing himself then maybe they can keep him from getting worse by getting him to sleep. She loudly states that Volkova seems to be affected -- winking furiously at Volkova, who puts on a cartoony act of being mind-controlled -- and that given her strength they should knock her out to prevent her from heading off on her own. Bishop agrees to quickly make a knockout concoction for her if it will get them moving again. Once he's made it Volkova holds him still while he's force-fed the draught and is soon out like a light.
With three of their party down it's definitely time to get out of here. Hopefully they'll be able to follow the trail of posters that Jillian's been leaving...
----------
Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 17)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (and she prefers it that way)
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 4)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 3)